Gild (pronounced gild)
(1) To
coat with gold, gold leaf, or a gold-colored substance.
(2) To render
something with a bright, pleasing, or specious aspect; having the color or
appearance of gold.
(3) Smear
with blood; to make red, as with blood (archaic except in historic reference).
(4) To adorn
in some way.
(5) In cooking,
to render some surface with a golden appearance.
(6) To
make appear drunk (now rare).
1300–1350:
From the Middle English gilden & gulden (to gild, to cover with a thin
layer of gold), from the Old English gyldan
(akin to gold) and related to the Old Norse gylla
(to gild), the Old High German ubergulden
(to cover with gold) (the verb from gultham
(gold)) and the Middle High German vergülden,
from the Proto-West Germanic gulþijan,
from the Proto-Germanic gulþijaną,
from gulþą (gold).
1967 Cadillac Eldorado.
The
figurative use of gild apparently began in the late sixteenth century. The noun gilding (golden surface produced by
gilding (the verb)" was from the mid fifteenth century, the verb
pre-dating the form by some two decades.
The adjective gilded emerged 1400 as the past participle of the Middle
English gilden and by the early
fifteenth century was used also as a noun with the sense of "gilding". The noun eldorado entered English in the
1590s from the Spanish El Dorado (the
golden one ( the name given in the sixteenth century to the country or city laden
with gold believed to lie in the heart of the Amazon jungle)); it was derived
from the past participle of dorar (to
gild), from Latin deaurare (to gild,
to gild over), the construct being de-
(probably used here as an intensifier) + aurare
(to gild), from aurum (gold). The legend began with the tales of early
Spanish explorers and, regarding gold, there would once have been some truth in
the story but, in the way of such things, there was embellishment (gilding the
story as it were) until Eldorado was thought a city where the “streets were paved with gold” and for
two centuries this drew explorers and adventurers. Gild is a noun & verb, gilding is a verb
& adjective, gilded is a verb, begild is a verb & adjective and begilded
& gildable is an adjective.
In idiomatic
use, the use as “gilded cage” refers to a place (and, by extension, a
situation) which is superficially attractive but nevertheless restrictive (a
luxurious trap) and appears to have been coined by the writers of the popular
song A Bird in a Gilded Cage (1900). In the slang of apothecaries, there was also “gild
the pill”, the history of which is murky but it’s said to refer to the ancient practice
of coating bitter tasting pills with a thin layer of metal, the modern version
of the phrase being “sugarcoat the pill”.
In historic UK use, the noun gildsman was an alternative spelling of
guildsman (a man who is a member of a guild).
To “gild the lily” is unnecessarily to adorn something already beautiful,
either in poor taste (a modern expression of which is “bling”) or in an attempt
to make something appear more valuable (it has also been used (though less
satisfactorily) to mean “inordinately to praise someone”). Despite often being credited with the
coining, nowhere is the works Shakespeare does the phrase appear, Lord Salisbury’s
words (King John, Act 4, Scene 2) actually being:
Therefore, to be possess'd with double pomp,
To guard a title that was rich before,
To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw a perfume on the violet,
To smooth the ice, or add another hue
Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light
To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.
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